Thank you.
Since the post got noticed, I wanted to add some commentary on how animation canceling could have anything to do with skill.
“Pressing a button twice” involves little skill, true, but building the habit and learning when to use the technique does involve skill. The technique itself enabled additional decision-making, taking away your ability to attack but allowing you to run away, reposition, or try something else entirely different like maybe use an animation-based consumable. It emphasized mobility, positioning and quick thinking, all of which have a vast skill ceiling. Ultimately, the combat now feels like it has been reduced to a slow game of timing combos, timing dodges, and walking in circles until your stamina is back.
This might be good for PVP, but for PVE, especially my kind of solo and engaged PVE, it’s just painful to go through.
Now, I agree with anyone who says that canceling as a way to jump between weapons and chain endless uninterrupted attacks with zero drawbacks is pure cheese, because it is and I shouldn’t have to explain why. That’s not what I’m defending.
What I’m defending is an emphasis on the usefulness of mobility, positioning and quick decision-making that came with canceling. What I’m attacking is the often unnecessary slowness and built-in delays of many weapons, delays that extend well past their actual animations, or sometimes contextually just don’t make sense.
I do hope someone from Funcom reads these posts and recognizes that something good actually has been lost and they need to do more to patch the hole it has left.